Friday, October 05, 2007

Freelancing

So... lots has changed, really.

Firstly, I don't seem to be updating my blog any more (again). I think this is ultimately because the desire to share with the world 'what I'm doing' is now being satisfied by the rather lazier Twitter. Those micro-chunks of mundane information collectively form a sort-of-blog, though admittedly it's probably not going to appear in the shortlists for any literary awards any time soon. For those who have no desire to sift through what is effectively a massive collection of SMS messages, here's what else I've been doing.

I have departed from the mighty Dare (just in time to miss them winning an impressive five Campaign Digital Awards), and am now a freelancer once again. The last time I was a full time freelancer was back in 2002, when I had no portfolio, no client-list worth speaking of, and only a nifty little Flash game and a few mates' websites with which to prove my abilities. In fact, it was even before I started this blog (just).

This time round things seem to be completely different. The only real problem I seem to be facing at the moment (touch wood) is the risk of taking on too much work. I made that mistake recently and the result was more than a week of working 9-6 at an agency followed by, on average, an 8pm till 2am shift every evening. Still, it'll pay for some time off when the cheques turn up.

It's been good to work in a handful of different agencies, though I'm equally keen to escape the world of agency work wherever possible. This week and next I'm doing some photography and design work directly for a client. Cutting out the project manager, and account manager has its pros and cons but this client has been relatively well behaved so far, and it's nice having fewer cooks to spoil the broth.

In other news, I'm no longer living in Camberwell. I'll miss it in many ways, though there are clearly some aspects of SE5 that I'm glad to move on from – the immovable junkie collapsed in my doorway a few weeks ago, for example. The main reason for the move, though, is that fact that I've finally escaped the world of landlords and rent and have bought half of, and subsequently moved into, the house of my lovely girlfriend Rachael.

Fortunately, being in SE4, it's not too far away so I'll still be oft found slurping cold Heinekens in a Camberwell pub with superior blogger and old pal The Eyechild.

As for the blog: I'll try to post more often, though it's rather dependent on not having a hundred other things to do instead. I started writing this post over a week ago and have only managed to complete it today. Having a large to-do list keeps life interesting though, I find.